Many articles about diabetes appear daily, many of them very interesting. The intent here is to make some of these available for others who may not see them or have bypassed them. I will try to comment briefly on those I have grouped or on an individual article. This is not guaranteed to be a daily post, but I hope that this will give you ideas for your own research or blog posts. Please talk to your doctor about medical problems.

17 September 2013

Hospitals May Lose for Hospital-Acquired Infections

Hospitals are beginning to put standards and safety measures in
place to prevent hospital infections. With the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services (CMS) and now other insurance companies
refusing to pay for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), this has
forced the issue and hospitals are taking notice. When hospitals
have their bottom line at issue, they will take action, which is a
good thing for patients,

Although hospitals have balked at safety standards for decades,
being able to put a dollar value on associated costs could help
providers and payers justify investing in prevention measures. Even
with implementation of quality improvement initiatives, an estimated
$9.8 billion is spent each year for treating HAIs. This was the
finding of a study published online September 2 in JAMA Internal
Medicine.

Quoting from the abstract, “With surgical site infections
contributing the most to overall costs (33.7% of the total), followed
by ventilator-associated pneumonia (31.6%), central line–associated
bloodstream infections (18.9%), C difficile infections (15.4%), and
catheter-associated urinary tract infections (<1 i=""> This
is something that should not be ignored.1>

“"Not paying
for hospital-acquired infections or errors are an important part of
the movement toward paying for quality, not quantity, of care,"
Mitchell H. Katz, MD, director, Los Angeles County Department of
Health Services in California, concurs in an accompanying editorial.
This study, however, will enable hospital administrators to better
prioritize their spending by allowing them to compare the costs of
interventions with the savings accrued by avoiding infections.”

Patient safety should have always been a priority, but has not
been as long as hospitals were able to be reimbursed for their lack
of safety procedures.

About Me

I am enjoying life, despite diabetes type 2. I am retired and enjoying the time I have for writing and photography. I was diagnosed with type 2 on Oct 2003, on oral meds for 4 months and they were doing nothing to really improve my daily readings. By cutting my carbohydrates I received the most improvement, but still not enough. Then I requested insulin, even though I did not like the thought of needles. That brought about the biggest change and A1c's in the lower 6's and upper 5's. Now I am working at maintaining them under 6.0 and hopefully nearer 5.5.